Goa trance

Goa trance is an electronic music style that originated during the late 1980s in Goa, India. Goa trance has often funky drone-like bass-lines, compared to techno minimalism of 21st century psytrance.

History

The music has its roots in the popularity of Goa in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a hippie capital, and although musical developments were incorporating elements of industrial music and EBM (electronic body music) with the spiritual culture in India throughout the 1980s, the actual Goa trance style did not appear until the early 1990s.

The music played was a blend of styles loosely defined as techno and various genres of computer music (e.g., high energy disco without vocals, acid house, electro, industrial gothic, various styles of house, electronic rock hybrids). The music arrived on tape cassettes by fanatic traveler collectors and DJs. It was shared (copied) tape to tape among Goa DJs, which was an underground scene, not driven by labels or music industry.

The artists producing this 'special Goa music' had no idea that their music was being played on the beaches of Goa by "cyber hippies". The first techno that was played in Goa was Kraftwerk in the late 1970s on the tape of a visiting DJ. At the time the music played at the parties was live bands. Tapes were played in between sets. In the early 1980s, sampling synth and MIDI music appeared globally and DJs became the preferred format in Goa, with two tape decks driving a party without a break, facilitating continuous music and continuous dancing. There had been resistance from the old-school acid heads who insisted that only acid rock should be played at parties, but they soon relented and converted to the revolutionary wave of technodelia that took hold in the 1980s.

Randomness

Randomness is the lack of pattern or predictability in events. A random sequence of events, symbols or steps has no order and does not follow an intelligible pattern or combination. Individual random events are by definition unpredictable, but in many cases the frequency of different outcomes over a large number of events (or "trials") is predictable. For example, when throwing two dice, the outcome of any particular roll is unpredictable, but a sum of 7 will occur twice as often as 4. In this view, randomness is a measure of uncertainty of an outcome, rather than haphazardness, and applies to concepts of chance, probability, and information entropy.

The fields of mathematics, probability, and statistics use formal definitions of randomness. In statistics, a random variable is an assignment of a numerical value to each possible outcome of an event space. This association facilitates the identification and the calculation of probabilities of the events. Random variables can appear in random sequences. A random process is a sequence of random variables whose outcomes do not follow a deterministic pattern, but follow an evolution described by probability distributions. These and other constructs are extremely useful in probability theory and the various applications of randomness.

Psychedelic trance

Psychedelic trance, psytrance or just psy (derived from the Ancient Greek word ψυχή "psyche", mind; soul; breath; spirit) is a genre of electronic dance music characterized by arrangements of synthetic rhythms and layered melodies created by high tempo riffs. By 1998 psytrance had become a mainstream form of music.

Psytrance lies at the hardcore, underground end of the diverse trance spectrum. The genre offers variety in terms of mood, tempo, and style. Some examples include full on, darkpsy, Hi-Tech, progressive, suomi, psy-chill, psycore, psybient, psybreaks, or "adapted" tracks from other music genres. Goatrance preceded psytrance, when digital media became more commonly used psytrance evolved. Goa continues to develop alongside the other genres.

History

Origins

The first hippies who arrived in Goa, India in the mid-1960s were drawn there for many reasons, including the beaches, the low cost of living, the friendly locals, the Indian religious and spiritual practices and the readily available Indian cannabis, which until the mid-1970s was legal. During the 1970s the first Goa DJs were generally playing psychedelic rock bands such as the Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd and The Doors. In 1979 the beginnings of electronic dance music could occasionally be heard in Goa in the form of tracks by artists such as Kraftwerk but it was not until 1983 that DJs Laurent and Fred Disko, closely followed by Goa Gil, began switching the Goa style over to electro-industrial/EBM which was now flooding out of Europe from Frontline Assembly, Front 242, Nitzer Ebb as well as Eurobeat.

Virtual Light

Virtual Light is the first book in William Gibson's Bridge trilogy. Virtual Light is a science-fiction novel set in a postmodern, dystopian, cyberpunk future. The term 'Virtual Light' was coined by scientist Stephen Beck to describe a form of instrumentation that produces optical sensations directly in the eye without the use of photons. The novel was a finalist nominee for a Hugo Award, and shortlisted for the Locus Award in 1994.

Plot summary

The plot centers around Chevette Washington, a young bicycle messenger who lives in the ad hoc, off-the-grid community that has grown on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake.

Chevette, on a whim, steals a pair of dark-rimmed glasses from a man at a party because she is offended by his demeanor. Soon after, she realizes that the glasses have unlikely importance, as security company henchmen begin tracking and following her. Among the pursuers are Svobodov and Orlovsky, two Russian immigrants who reside in San Francisco and are employed as cops, as well as Loveless, a ruthless corporate hitman with gold incisors. The glasses contain plans by a powerful corporation to rebuild San Francisco entirely using nanotechnology, and for that reason, they are highly coveted and present a danger to the person who possesses them.

Dark Night

Dark Night may refer to:

See also